Stories of family and ancestors who lived and worked in Cohoes (textile and garment workers, butchers and barbers), Waterford (canalers), Whitehall (farmers and canalers), Port Henry (iron miners and Civil War soldiers), Champlain (canalers and farmers) and other towns along the Champlain Canal in New York State with some diversions to the places they emigrated from....Quebec (landless farmers, shoemakers, sailors, soldiers), Acadia (more farmers), and even Cornwall, England (tin miners).

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Seems there is a lot out on the internet about the historical basis of PTSD. One of the most interesting articles is here about Civil War soldiers and post traumatic stress disorder. If researchers can dig into primary sources from the mid nineteenth century about PTSD, could it be possible to leap one hundred years before to the period of the Acadian deportation and research the same thing?

Below is a recap of the stories written about Acadians in this blog so far. This list includes some early posts that may not have been well researched but I am reviewing them for accuracy and hope they will "make the cut"!

OR

Did Acadians commonly suffer from what we now call

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

after the Grand Derangement?

Or was

Geoffroi Benoit the only one with documented mental illness

after the deportation??

Some time ago I wrote about Godefroy/Geoffroi/Godfroi Benoit and Madeleine Babin in a post. Now I have some new information and new thoughts about this couple. Some readers of this blog know I have an interest in medical and nursing diagnoses and am a practicing nurse practitioner in NYC. I haven't grappled with mental illnesses in this blog although I have posted about hypothyroidism, cholera, tuberculosis, smallpox, nicotine addiction. Although there seems to be a strong vein of psychological issues in my family, I just haven't thought about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Many men and women of WW2, including my father Arthur, had profound repercussions from PTSD . So I am charting a new course when I write about PTSD.

Before I go into PTSD, I would like to take a simple look at two words we do not commonly use in everyday American speech: derangement from the French and idiot from the Greek "idiotes" meaning "private person" or person lacking a skill or expertise.

The name the Acadian call the deportation from Acadia is "Le Grand Derangement". In English it calls to my mind words like "deranged", chaos, helter-skelter. The word "Idiot" which was in common usage when I was a child but is seldom used today unless attempting an insult. Below are definitions from an online dictionary.

idiot [id-ee-uh t] noun
1. Informal. an utterly foolish or senseless person: If you think you can wear that outfit to a job interview and get hired,you're an idiot!
2. Psychology. (no longer in technical use; considered offensive) a personof the lowest order in a former and discarded classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old and an intelligence quotient under 25.
Synonyms
1. fool, half-wit; imbecile; dolt, dunce, numskull.Copyright 2015 Dictionary.com

Idiot didn’t always have the same insulting tones it has today. An idiot was someone with impaired mental ability (Johnson’s definition is“A fool; a natural; a changeling; one without the powers of reason”). The word could be used in a value-neutral sort of way: when Swift willed money “for building and maintaining an hospital for idiots and lunatics,” he wasn’t being insulting.

derangement

Again from Dictionary.com we find in today's usage it means insanity, disorder, disarrangement or the act of deranging. In medicine it is also used for mental disorder or insanity

With that background in mind, let's proceed to a recent communication from Michael B. Melanson (the Melanson Family genealogist) who brought a description of Geoffroi Benoit to my attention via a FB communication. In his massive work, "Melanson-Melancon: The Genealogy of an Acadian and Cajun Family". Dracut Massachusetts: Lanesville Publishing. 2004., Melanson cites documents in the Massachusetts Archives (Volume 23) detailing events in the lives of Acadian exiles in Boston. The details include a description of Geoffroi Benoit, who is

"disoriented in the senses" (pp 358-360)

and another that

"Geoffroi was reported to be almost an idot [sic, idiot]" (p 300).

In my next post, I will continue to investigate and share my findings about PTSD and the Acadians! Please "stay with me" and if you have an Acadian ancestor with documentation of mental instabilty after the deportation, please email me at FrancoAmericanGravy@gmail.com

Paul Benoit 1751-1831. He likely experienced the Acadian Deportation as a small child - 4 or 5 years old. He was the son of

Geoffroy Benoit 1716-1769

He and his wife were exiled to Lancaster in the Massachusetts Colony where they lived until they were able to move to Quebec. He was the son of

Claude Benoit 1686-1743, he was the son of

Martin Benoit 1643-1714. Martin was born in France and came to Acadia to start a life with his wife, Marie in the spring of 1671 aboard l'Oranger.
Below is a recap of the stories written about Acadians in this blog so far. This list includes some early posts that may not have been well researched but I am reviewing them for accuracy and hope they will "make the cut"!

Pages

“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Wilder, Thornton. The Bridge of San Luis Rey. 1927.

Reading this Blog....

...may not seem particularly easy. I post information and stories in whatever sequence comes to me and sometimes it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I may post about someone and three weeks later write about them again. In between the two posts, there may be stories about other people or places. That is why there is a search button at the bottom of this page.

Thanks for reading and commenting! Email me at FrancoAmericanGravy@gmail.com